Actually, given how smart Beethoven was and the fact that he wasn't born deaf, I bet he can pretty well hear in his mind what he was hearing...no?
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F'ed in the A. |
I thought that he wend deaf at some point in his life too...
One of his deals was that he cut off the legs of his piano and basically played it with his head on the floor right next to it so he could FEEL the music. So in essence he heard the music through a different sense. Either way, damn good composer
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Beasty |
Yeah, he started to notice the growing ringing in his ears around the turn of the 19th century. I believe it was 1803 when he want to Lake Heiligenstadt to get away from society, and this was when he wrote his famous Heiligenstadt Testament, which was essentially a will leaving his belongings to his brothers, and his first public admittance of his growing deafness.
While he had SOME hearing for the next 15 years or so, the last 10-15 years of his life he was COMPLETELY Stone deaf (aside from the constant ringing). This is when he wrong Ode to Joy.
You'll notice, however, that He had the urge to write a Ode to Joy his whole life. If you ever look into his "Choral Fantasty" you'll hear the melodies are strikingly familiar to Ode to Joy, even though he had written it a good 20-30 years prior.
Yeah, that story about sawing the legs of his piano off is a pretty widely told story, and I'm pretty sure it's based on fact.
There are two AWESOME stories that can be told about him in his later years:
1) At the premier of the 9th Symphony (Ode to Joy), he stood on stage facing the orchestra, completely deaf. When it completed, he hadn't noticed the music had stopped (obviously), but the crowd was already going pretty crazy, in a standing ovation, for the music. One of the Singers turned him around to face the ovation, and the crowd absolutly exploded.
2) One his deathbed, (I'm going to whip out one of my biographies for this, because I can't do it justice in my own words):
"Frau van Beethoven and I oonly were in the death chamber during the last moments of Beethoven's life. after beethoven had lain unconscious, the death rattle in his throat, from three o'clock in the afternoon until past five, there came a flsh of lightning accompanied by a violent clap of thunder, which garishly illuminated the death chamber. After this unexpected phenomenon of nature, which startled me greatly, Beethoven opened his eyes, lifted his right hand and lookd up for several seconds with his fist clenched, and a very powerful, serious, threatening expressiong as if he wanted to say: 'Powers of Evil, I defy you! Away with you! God is with me!...' When he let his raised hand sink to the bed, his eyes closed half-way. My right hand was under his head, my left rested on his breast. Not another breath, not a heartbeat more."
Goddamn....
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